Synthesis of prosodic attitudinal variants in German backchannel ja

Feedback utterances are an important part of any dialog between humans. When two or more persons talk, they use short backchannel utterances to signal understanding and interest in the conversation. Surprisingly little is known about the relationship between the accompanying prosody and the meaning of feedback perceived by the dialog partner. We present a qualitative modelling study of 12 synthesized German ja (yes) interjections that shows the influence of prosodic features on emotional and pragmatic perception of this kind of feedback. Listeners perceived utterances as bored, hesitant, or happy and agreeing depending on the prosodic parameters used for synthesis.